Connecting to the SAP HANA server
Now that we've taken a look at the different panels available in the Studio, we can connect to our SAP HANA server.
Note
You'll need the connection information for your server at this point. This includes:
- The address of the server
- The SAP HANA instance number
- Whether you connect using a username and password, or using Single sign-on (SSO) and the SSO method if appropriate
If you don't know this information, ask your system administrator.
Additionally, for the examples in the book to work correctly, you will need the authorization to create schemas and tables, as well as modeling objects. When your system administrator asks the authorizations you need, you can say that they are:
- PUBLIC
- CONTENT_ADMIN
- MODELING
Authorizations will be covered fully in Chapter 7, Hey! That's My Data! – Authorizations in SAP HANA.
In order to create a connection to your SAP HANA server, you can proceed in one of the following two ways:
- Follow the Cheat Sheet panel's Adding a New Systems and Folders wizard. This will take you step by step through the creation of a new connection in the Studio.
- Right-click in the Navigator panel, and select Add System from the menu.
Both methods will lead you to the same System dialog, as shown in the following screenshot:
We can see in the screenshot that we are adding a server on the machine at the address hana.corp, with an instance number of 02.
The instance number allows for several copies of the SAP HANA database to run on the same machine at the same time. You might, for example, have one copy of the database running for development tasks, and another copy for validation that the developments are correct. In this way you have one instance where the state of development might be relatively unstable because developers are continually making changes to the information models, and a second instance where only developments that are considered complete are present, and which is therefore more stable.
Clicking on Next will make the Studio validate that it can connect to the server whose address you specify, and will prompt you for your connection information:
In this example, we're connecting to the server using a provided username and password. We also have the possibility of connecting using our Windows login credentials, if the system administrator has configured the server to allow this.
Clicking on Finish will add the connection information to the Studio, so that from now on we won't have to enter the information any more. The SAP HANA server will be added to the Navigator panel, and we'll see the different types of object stored in the database, as shown in the following screenshot:
Our server (HN5), to which we connect using the SYSTEM user, has been added to our Studio. On this server, there are three families of objects (Catalog, Security, and Content), as well as an option to examine the backup status of the server (Backup).
The Catalog folder contains pure SQL objects such as schemas, tables, database views, and so on. These are the same types of objects you would find in any given database; they are not specific to SAP HANA.
The Security folder contains the information related to the security and authorizations in the SAP HANA server. For example, it contains the list of authorization roles and users, and allows manipulation of these objects. We'll be looking in detail at the authorization concept in SAP HANA in Chapter 7, Hey! That's My Data! – Authorizations in SAP HANA.
Finally, the Content folder will contain the SAP HANA information models we create. These objects are specific to SAP HANA, and represent our developments on the server. Creation of these objects will be covered in detail in Chapter 3, Your First SAP HANA Development – An Attribute View to Chapter 6, You Talking to Me? – Scripted Calculation Views.